arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to L. Maiani.
In response to recent experimental findings from the BES III and LHCb collaborations concerning the decay of open charm mesons into three pseudoscalars, we present evidence suggesting that the lightest scalar mesons can be characterized as diquark-antidiquark states mixed with the next-to-light, q\bar q, scalar mesons through six-fermion, instanton-induced interactions.
Discovery of the J Particle at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Physics of Electrons and Positrons; The Standard Model Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; The Rise of Gauge Theories: From Many Models to One Theory; From Charm to CP Violation; When the Standard Model Was Ignored; The Discovery of the W and Z Bosons at the CERN Proton-Antiproton Collider; A Personal History of CERN Particle Colliders (1972-2022); The Age of Gravitational Wave Astronomy; Precision Physics in the Era of (HL)LHC; Recent Developments in Flavor Physics, the Unitary Triangle Fit, Anomalies and All That; About BSM Physics, with Emphasis on Flavour; The Discovery of the Antiproton between Rome and Berkeley; Raoul Gatto and Bruno Touschek: the Rise of $e+e^-$ Physics; From ADONE's Multi-Hadron Production to the J/$\Psi$ Discovery; From Bjorken Scaling to Scaling Violations
Prompted by a recent lattice QCD calculation, we review the SU(3) light quark flavor structure of charmed tetraquarks with spin-0 diquarks. Fermi statistics forces the three light quarks to be in the representation 3*x3*= 3+6*. This agrees with the weak repulsion in the 15 of the 3x8 in Dbar K scattering studied on the lattice. We analyze the 3+6* multiplet broken by the strange quark mass and determine the five independent masses from the known masses of diquarks. The mass of D^* _{s0}(2317) is predicted within 50 MeV accuracy. The recently observed D_s^{--}(2900) and D_s^{0}(2900), likely part of a I=1 multiplet, with flavor composition c* q* q' s and X_0(2900), an isosinglet with flavor composition c*s* ud, fit naturally in a 3+6* structure as the first radial excitations. We discuss also the decay modes of D^* _{s0}(2317), of the radial excitations and of the predicted particles.
Radiative decays X --> psi(1S) + gamma and X --> psi(2S) + gamma might be expected to have a ratio of branching fractions following the phase space volumes ratio. However data suggest the opposite, indicating a value for R=B(X --> psi^prime + gamma) / B(X --> psi +gamma) consistently larger than one. In this paper we present a calculation of R for both a compact Born-Oppenheimer cc-bar q-qbar state and a DD^* molecule. In the former case R~1 or larger is found, a value to be confronted with forthcoming high statistics data analyses. In the molecular picture, with D and D^* mesons described by the universal wave function used by Voloshin, Braaten and Kusunoki, we find that R would be of order 10^-2. A more precise experimental measure would be extremely helpful in clarifying the true nature of the X(3872).
We perform a quantitative analysis of the decays of $cc\bar c\bar c$ tetraquarks with $J^{PC}=0^{++}, 2^{++}$ into 4 muons and into hidden- and open-charm mesons and estimate, for the first time, the fully charmed tetraquark decay width. The calculated cross section upper limit is $\sim 40$ fb for the 4 muons channel, and $\sim 28$ nb for the $D^{(*)} \bar D^{(*)} \to eμ$ channel. On the basis of our results, with the present sensitivity LHCb should detect both signals, for $0^{++}$ and $2^{++}$ fully-charmed tetraquarks.
We perform a quantitative analysis of the $bb\bar{b}\bar{b}$ tetraquark decays into hidden- and open-bottom mesons and calculate, for the first time, the $bb\bar{b}\bar{b}$ tetraquark total decay width. On the basis of our results, we propose the $bb\bar{b}\bar{b} \to B^{+} B^{-} (B^0 \bar{B}^0) (B_s^0 \bar{B}_s^0) \to l^{+} l^{-}+\text{X}$ decays as the most suitable channels to observe the $bb\bar{b}\bar{b}$ tetraquark states, since the calculated two-lepton cross section upper limit, $\simeq 39 $ fb, is so large as to be potentially detectable with the 2018 LHCb sensitivity, paving the way to the observation of the $bb\bar{b}\bar{b}$ tetraquark in the future LHCb upgrade. The $4μ$ signal for the ground state, $J^{PC}=0^{++}$, is likely to be too small even for the upgraded LHCb, but it may not be hopeless for the $J^{PC}=2^{++}$ fully-bottom state.
We review the capabilities of two projects that have been proposed as the next major European facility, for consideration in the upcoming update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics: CLIC and FCC. We focus on their physics potentials and emphasise the key differences between the linear or circular approaches. We stress the uniqueness of the FCC-ee programme for precision electroweak physics at the $Z$ peak and the $WW$ threshold, as well as its unequalled statistics for Higgs physics and high accuracy for observing possible new phenomena in Higgs and $Z$ decays, whereas CLIC and FCC-ee offer similar capabilities near the $t \overline t$ threshold. Whilst CLIC offers the possibility of energy upgrades to 1500 and 3000 GeV, FCC-ee paves the way for FCC-hh. The latter offers unique capabilities for making direct or indirect discoveries in a new energy range, and has the highest sensitivity to the self-couplings of the Higgs boson and any anomalous couplings. We consider the FCC programme to be the best option to maintain Europe's place at the high-energy frontier during the coming decades.
In this paper we present in greater detail previous work on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to treat the hydrogen bond of QCD, and add a similar treatment of doubly heavy baryons. Doubly heavy exotic resonances X and Z can be described as color molecules of two-quark lumps, the analogue of the H_2 molecule, and doubly heavy baryons as the analog of the H_2^+ ion, except that the two heavy quarks attract each other. We compare our results with constituent quark model and lattice QCD calculations and find further evidence in support of this upgraded picture of compact tetraquarks and baryons.
Using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, we show that exotic resonances, X and Z, may emerge as QCD molecular objects made of colored two-quark lumps, states with heavy-light diquarks spatially separated from antidiquarks. With the same method we confirm that doubly heavy tetraquarks are stable against strong decays. Tetraquarks described here provide a new picture of exotic hadrons, as formed by the QCD analog of the hydrogen bond of molecular physics.
We introduce the hypothesis that diquarks and antidiquarks in tetraquarks are separated by a potential barrier. We show that this notion can answer satisfactorily long standing questions challenging the diquark-antidiquark model of exotic resonances. The tetraquark description of X and Z resonances is shown to be compatible with present limits on the non-observation of charged partners X^+-, of the X(3872) and the absence of a hyperfine splitting between two different neutral states. In the same picture, Z_c and Z_b particles are expected to form complete isospin triplets plus singlets. It is also explained why the decay rate into final states including quarkonia are suppressed with respect to those having open charm/beauty states.
In a recent paper it is claimed that vacuum birefringence has been experimentally observed for the first time by measuring the degree of polarization of visible light from a Magnetar candidate, a neutron star with a magnetic field presumably as large as $B\sim 10^{13}$~G. The role of such a strong magnetic field is twofold. First, the surface of the star emits, at each point, polarized light with linear polarization correlated with the orientation of the magnetic field. Depending on the relative orientation of the magnetic axis of the star with the direction to the distant observer, a certain degree of polarization should be visible. Second, the strong magnetic field in the vacuum surrounding the star could enhance the effective degree of polarization observed: vacuum birefringence. We compare experimental data and theoretical expectations concluding that the conditions to support a claim of strong evidence of vacuum birefringence effects are not met.
We briefly comment on the paper by Albaladejo et al. [arXiv:1709.09101], rejecting its conclusions.
We suggest that the J/psi phi structures observed by LHCb can be fitted in two tetraquak multiplets, the S-wave ground state and the first radial excitation, with composition [cs][cbar sbar]. When compared to the previously identified [cq][cbar qbar] multiplet, the observed masses agree with what expected for a multiplet with q -->s. We propose the X(4274), fitted by LHCb with a single 1^++ resonance, to correspond rather to two, almost degenerate, unresolved lines with J^PC = 0^++, 2^++. Masses of missing particles in the 1S and 2S multiplets are predicted.
Diquarks are found to have the right degrees of freedom to describe the tetraquark poles in hidden-charm to open-charm meson-meson amplitudes. Compact tetraquarks result as intermediate states in non-planar diagrams of the 1/N expansion and the corresponding resonances are narrower than what estimated before. The proximity of tetraquarks to meson-thresholds has an apparent role in this analysis and, in the language of meson molecules, an halving rule in the counting of states is obtained.
The recent observation by the D0 collaboration of a narrow structure X(5568) consisting of four different quark flavors bdus, has not been confirmed by LHCb. More data and dedicated analyses are needed to cover a larger mass range. In the tightly bound diquark model, we estimate the lightest bdus, 0^+ tetraquark at a mass of about 5770 MeV, approximately 200 MeV above the reported X(5568), and just 7 MeV below the B Kbar threshold. The charged tetraquark is accompanied by I=1 and I=0 neutral partners almost degenerate in mass. A bdus, S-wave, 1^+ quartet at 5820 MeV is implied as well. In the charm sector, cdus, 0^+ and 1^+ tetraquarks are predicted at 2365 MeV and 2501 MeV, about 40-50 MeV heavier than D_{s0}(2317) and D_{s1}(2460). bdus tetraquarks can be searched in the hadronic debris of a jet initiated by a b. However, some of them may also be produced in B_c decays. The proposed discovery modes of S-wave tetraquarks are B_c --> X_{b0} + pi with the subsequent decays X_{b0} --> B_s + pi, giving rise to final states such as B_s pi^+ pi^0. We also emphasize the importance of B_c decays as a source of bound hidden charm tetraquarks, such as B_c --> X(3872) + pi.
The observed Y(4260)\to γ+ X(3872) decay is a natural consequence of the diquark-antidiquark description of Y and X resonances. In this note we attempt an estimate of the transition rate, Γ_{\rm rad}, by a non-relativistic calculation of the electric dipole term of a diquarkonium bound state. We compute Γ_{\rm rad} for generic composition values of the isospin of X and Y. Specializing to I=0 for X(3872), we find Γ_{\rm rad}= 496~keV for Y(4260) with I=0 and Γ_{\rm rad}= 179~keV for I=1. Combining with BESIII data, we derive upper bounds to B(Y\to J/Ψ+π+π) and to Γ(Y\to μ^+ μ^-). We expect to confront these results with forthcoming data from electron-positron and hadron colliders.
Pentaquarks and dibaryons are natural possibilities if diquarks are used as the building blocks to assemble hadrons. In this short note, motivated by the very recent discovery of two pentaquark states, we highlight some possible channels to search for dibaryons in Lambda_b(5620) decays.
The new data reported by ALICE on the production of light nuclei with pT < 10 GeV in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV are used to compute an order-of-magnitude estimate of the expected production cross sections of light nuclei in proton-proton collisions at high transverse momenta. We compare the hypertriton, helium-3 and deuteron production cross sections to that of X(3872), measured in prompt pp collisions by CMS. The results we find suggest a different production mechanism for the X(3872), making questionable any loosely bound molecule interpretation.